What is Moral Philosophy(1) & Wireless control of Canon Cameras

CityLit -Off to a great place to learn

Having completed a number of Philosophy courses at CityLit (all led by the excellent Scott Biagi, amazingly I see that my first course at CityLit on this topic was nearly 4 years ago) I thought that the time was overdue to continue finding out about the big questions and seeing if Philosophy as a 'subject' transcends the experience I've had so far.


So the course that I've enrolled on (and started) is called Moral Philosophy, it's at City Lit (again) and the course leader for this  is Ariel Kernberg.


Great mixture of people crowded into room, mixture of ages and Men and Women - for me one of the pleasures of previous courses was the interaction that took place and I reckon it'll be the same here.

First thing I note that we're told is that it's  formerly been known as Ethics so that might be something I reflect on as time goes by.

Having had a look at the difference between the empirical and normative we were presented with an overview and Three articles to read and consider before week two...

Here's what I got from the first one

What is Ethics

The article starts off looking at the significance of Ethics in business issues particularly around legal matters and company 'values'

1) Egoism - we act in our self interest
2) Natural Law - one behaves in line with human nature
3) Utilitarianism - greater overall human welfare, for example throwing yourself on a grenade
4) Respect for Persons - acting in a way that recognises human dignity

Captain Oates in the ill fated South Pole expedition  led by Captain Scott is given as an example we might consider Oates walking out to his death when he said

This case (and others) alert us to the importance of fact in real life cases - although we might share a desire for a certain 'Moral' outcome we might have a different perspective on the way to achieve it.

Interested in learning & meeting people?

I am going outside and I may be some time....

Was he concerned with ending his own suffering or improving the others chance of survival?


Conceptual issues 

Conceptual issues need to be looked at, these might include during a war are Civilian populations innocent?
Modern medical techniques might require us to redefine death - as we can now sustain life beyond what was formerly considered to be 'death'- is the ending of one's own life immoral?

Normative versus factual

Factual - 
The Sky is blue (empirical research).

Normative 
You should be wary of strangers

Income in the USA is unequal (fact)

we might then propose that income inequality is wrong as a moral statement but it could be hard to convince all of this.

Consequentialism measures behaviour by effect it has either good for oneself Egoism or society at large Utilitarianism 

The difference between Right (absolute) and Good (various degrees of)

There's a really interesting example in the article about issues around a possible suicide for 'A Burn Vitim's Desire to Die' .. here it is - I think you'll agree that it's not something that can be given an easy answer. (there's a film about this too but not I've been able to locate it online).

I'm hoping to report more on this course - but expect that I'll get from it an ability to interrogate problems rather than just answers to them - here's a definition of Moral Philosophy.

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Canon Remote Camera  on  Android 

Along with configuring the Google Home Mini one of my motivations to get a new phone was the chance to enhance what I could do with the Canon G7 Camera - here's a nice Youtube that covers it

some of it.